SWIFT Carbon

SWIFT Carbon steps into the carbon bike and component market. Take a look at some of their new products for 2012.

Detailed First Look

Summary
We met with a new player in the carbon bike and component market. SWIFT is a new
brand, but some of the people involved in the company have been around a long time,
which is not hard to figure out once you see their products. Along with focusing on
cutting edge bikes, they will also stay within UCI guidelines (which seem to change on a
daily basis).

Swift Aeronaut

Their Aeronaut TT bike is a very clean and simple, aero (we haven't seen any wind tunnel data yet) bike with some clever final touches that can only come from people who are experienced bike designers.

The bike comes with SWIFT's own integrated bars. Once we have the bike in our
hands, we will cover in detail the bars comfort, adjustability, etc.

The cables exit out the bars and into the top tube leaving very little exposed. This
seems to be the route most of the new TT bikes are taking with some companies doing
a better job than others at cleaning up this area.

Another thoughtful detail was the addition of this rubber grommet that simply covers the
seat post clamp bolt as well as making the joint all flow together smoothly. This will
prevent the unavoidable rust, sweat build up that always occurs on bolts in this area. It
seems as it might help with moisture entry if you were ever caught out in the rain.

As you can see, there is plenty of adjustability to get the perfect saddle position. We will have updated information regarding the achievable seat post angles soon.

Swift RS-1

SWIFT is also introducing a very light (~860g) road frame. It follows the same design
principle as many of the new top end road bikes by keeping the bottom tubes and
bottom bracket very beefy and the top half of the bike light and thin.

The beefed up bottom bracket area is very clean at all of the joint areas.

The rear seat stays start out as one and split in to very thin tubes.

Swift Wheels

SWIFT also has a very nice set of carbon clinchers weighing in at approximately 1350g
for the set.

They have figured out a process with building the carbon clinchers that eliminates the
holes for the spokes.

SWIFT has many other products that we did not mention here such as carbon tubular
wheels, mountain bike frames, and other road frames. However, we do plan on testing
as many of their products as we can get our hands on, so stay tuned.

We are looking forward to doing some real hands on testing over the next couple of
months when the SWIFT products arrive. Check back to get our thoughts in detail on
all of these new products.